Lesson Helps

April 2012 Visiting Teaching Message: Love, Watch Over, and Strengthen

Visiting Teaching Message:
Like the Savior, visiting teachers minister one by one (see 3 Nephi 11:15). We know we are successful in our ministering as visiting teachers when our sisters can say: (1) my visiting teacher helps me grow spiritually; (2) I know my visiting teacher cares deeply about me and my family; and (3) if I have problems, I know my visiting teacher will take action without waiting to be asked.1

How can we as visiting teachers love, watch over, and strengthen a sister? Following are nine suggestions found in chapter 7 of Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society to help visiting teachers minister to their sisters:

• Pray daily for her and her family.
• Seek inspiration to know her and her family.
• Visit her regularly to learn how she is doing and to comfort and strengthen her.

Click here to see the rest of the message.

Supplement: excerpt from "'Pure Religion': Watchcare and Ministering through Visiting Teaching," Chapter 7 of Daughters in My Kingdom:

While visiting teachers have always looked after the temporal needs of individuals and families, they have also had a higher purpose. Sister Eliza R. Snow, the second Relief Society general president, taught: “I consider the office of a teacher a high and holy office. I hope the sisters do not think that it consists merely in begging for the poor. You want to be filled with the Spirit of God, of wisdom, of humility, of love, that in case they have nothing to give they may not dread your coming.”

Sister Snow hoped that sisters would “perceive a difference in their houses” after a visit.7 She counseled visiting teachers to prepare themselves spiritually before they visited homes so they would be able to ascertain and meet spiritual needs as well as temporal ones: “A teacher … should surely have so much of the Spirit of the Lord, as she enters a house to know what spirit she meets in there. … Plead before God and the Holy Ghost to get [the Spirit] so that you will be able to meet that spirit that prevails in that house … and you may feel to talk words of peace and comfort, and if you find a sister feeling cold, take her to your heart as you would a child to your bosom and warm [her] up.”8

To read the rest of this chapter, click here.

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